


If She Lived

by Ebonrune



Category: Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Final Fantasy VII Remake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:41:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23990959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ebonrune/pseuds/Ebonrune
Summary: A short little 'what if' since the Remake wanted to change things anyway.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	If She Lived

She awoke on her stomach to smothering darkness and the stench of burnt hair with the coppery taste of blood. Slowly moving her body, moaning in pain and a good dose of fear, the young woman known as Jessie Rasberry tried to figure out why she was still alive.

It shouldn't have been this way. Cloud and the others should have succeeded, beaten Shinra, driven them back. _Stopped them_. But the fact that she was lying there trapped meant they had failed. Meant that Sector Seven's plate had fallen, and people had died. 

_'Oh no.'_ She thought, and started to hyperventilate there in the oppressive dark. _'Mom! Dad!'_ No one had warned them! 

She patted around desperately, as if she could find a solution if she could only find _something_ , but all she found was rebar and cement. Still, it was something to grasp, so she curled numb fingers around something and _pulled_.

Something gave below her right knee and pain shot up her leg. She gave a strangled gasp and passed out briefly, only to wake up again to agony so bright it felt like it should have lit up her surroundings. 

Biting into her knuckle--she'd lost the glove on that hand somehow--Jessie made herself work through the pain before laboriously and carefully rolling over and trying to sit up. She succeeded, but had to spend another precious minute breathing through hot stabs of pain as not only her leg, but her lower back cried out in agony. Slowly, so slowly, she felt down the affected leg, trying to determine how badly it was broken.

Instead she found something worse; a bloody stump.

"Oh." She intoned before giving a weak little giggle. "Well, that's bad." There was a puddle already, and it was steadily getting larger. If she didn't staunch the flow soon, she was definitely not getting the rest of herself out of there.

Did she really deserve to live though? After the lives she'd already surely taken when the first reactor blew so severely? 

"Stupid." She said through her teeth and fumbled with her headband. "If you're dead, you can't even try to atone." Getting it off, she shakily tied it tight above and around her knee, as tightly as she could manage, and hoped that it was enough. It did nothing for the pain--if anything, it increased it--but as long as it meant she didn't bleed to death, she'd just have to work with it.

Getting back onto her stomach since it was slightly less painful on her back to move this way, she slowly began to explore her makeshift tomb. It seemed to be pretty large, though it was hard to tell in the dark. Most importantly, she discovered a weak breeze coming from between a narrow crack. It was barely enough to get her fingers into, but it meant potential freedom.

She tried yelling into the crack at first, just in case there were any survivors who might help her. Just in case Cloud and the others had survived too. They'd gotten to the top after all, right? Maybe they'd made it out okay. Maybe Biggs and Wedge were okay too.

_'Yeah, and maybe I'll grow my leg back and ride a pink chocobo out of here.'_

When yelling seemed to be ineffective, Jessie came to a grim conclusion. If she wanted to get out, wanted even a chance to survive, she was going to have to rescue herself.

She lay there in her agony for several minutes, just trying to breathe and think, then rolled herself over again, sat up and felt at her stump. Her makeshift bandage was soaked, and she was definitely feeling lightheaded, but maybe the flow had slowed down? 

"Well, Jessie. Time to pull up your big girl britches and blow something up." Her voice echoed against the ceiling, and she reached up to try and get a feel for how much height she had to work with. Her plan would depend on that knowledge.

"A little under four feet, feels like." She commented. "Okay. I can do something with that." Four feet was a lot more generous than she had hoped for, in fact. Maybe the angels were smiling on her after all. "Okay!" It felt better to speak aloud. "I can do this."

It involved more crawling, and this time Jessie counted. It was hard, the pain distracted her a lot, but she was pretty sure she'd moved by a count of thirty by the time she found what she felt was the furthest opposite wall from her target, then once again she forced herself to roll over and sit up.

Feeling her belt, she found exactly what she'd hoped for; a grenade. She gave the dirty thing a kiss, felt for the ceiling again, hoping that the height was consistent, then pulled the pin and threw it before covering her face with both hands, knowing she couldn't move fast enough with the agony she was in to protect herself any better from the blast. This would either free her or put her out of her misery at least.

Jessie hadn't known just how close rescuers really were, and her grenade nearly caused one of them to be hit by flying debris. Once the panic and the dust settled however, they found her, toppled over and thoroughly unconscious.

"Don't just stand there!" Marle snapped. "Get her up before she bleeds out!"

When Jessie would awaken again, it was in a warm soft bed, wrapped in bandages and from how buzzy she felt, probably pumped full of painkillers. She didn't care where she was just then. She didn't even care if Shinra had been the ones to find her; she felt way too good for that. All that mattered was that she was alive, and being alive, she could avenge the fallen and find out what had happened to her friends.


End file.
